washing machine

A washing machine is a largemetal appliance, usually with a door on either the top or the front. (Household laundry machines usually have a solid metal flip-back door on top, while industrial washing machines have a round, glass door on the front.)

1. Old-style 14-inch hard disks in
floor-standing cabinets. So called because of the size of the
cabinet and the `top-loading' access to the media packs -- and, of
course, they were always set on `spin cycle'. The
washing-machine idiom transcends language barriers; it is even used
in Russian hacker jargon. See also walking drives. The thick
channel cables connecting these were called `bit hoses' (see
hose, sense 3). 2. [CMU] A machine used exclusively for
washing software. CMU has clusters of these.